What’s THAT book doing in the library? Dr. Seuss among authors targeted for removal

Sandra Singh, chief librarian at the Vancouver Public Library, says ‘a library’s collection has to reflect the wide range of ideas in the world, has to reflect the broad interests of the community.’Photo by
Jenelle Schneider

Every year the Vancouver Public Library is asked by members of the public to remove some books from its shelves, books that have upset someone’s sensibilities, and in 2013 a children’s book by Dr. Seuss was among them.

There aren’t a lot of formal requests for removal and they are almost always denied, but not before VPL takes a long, serious look at the book involved.

Take the Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo, for instance.

It seems laughable that a Seuss book, loved by parents and children alike, could offend anyone.

What are we, China? (Green Eggs and Ham was once banned there as being subversive.)

But it turns out there is a legitimate concern with If I Ran the Zoo.

For one, there is a line in the poem about helpers who “all wear their eyes at a slant,” accompanied by illustrations that are racial stereotypes of Asians.

There are also drawings of Africans that wouldn’t be acceptable to publish today.

But If I Ran the Zoo was published in 1950.

Janet Tomkins, head of children’s library at VPL, looked into it, checking out what the policies are at other libraries (one library has 101 copies of the book) and how parents and teachers deal with the book.

The VPL will keep its copies of the Seuss book, but will no longer read it at storytime or promote it other than as resource material in a study of how the portrayal of other cultures has changed over time.

“A library’s collection has to reflect the wide range of ideas in the world, has to reflect the broad interests of the community,” said VPL chief librarian Sandra Singh. “In a community like Vancouver, which is really diverse, we have diverse items in the collection.

“This is why we take (complaints) so seriously; we view the collection we’re curating as the community’s collection.”

As for the other two books that came up for examination in 2013, one was about raw milk, one about serial killers.

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